This aims to tackle the dark side of the American Dream, but it falls short in execution. While the concept is intriguing, the writing often feels heavy-handed and lacks the depth needed to make the themes truly resonate.

I know this was horror, but it was mostly heartbreaking. Through a collection of short stories and poetry, we see what the “American dream” has turned out to be and isn’t pretty. I suggest this for all horror lovers and also to everyone SICK of the nightmare America has become.

Thank you to Dragon's Roost Press and NetGalley for this digital ARC in return for an honest review.

Nightmerica is a collection that follows in the tradition of other anthologies like The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, The Night Gallery, and Tales from the Crypt, though I applaud the inclusion of poetry alongside prose exploring this most timely topic. It explores the darkest present and future of the United States given the steady decline towards authorianism as seen in the past decade and with increasingly rapidity under the current regime. Some are more speculative than other pieces while some are alarmingly grounded and all the more effective for it.

To the point of effectiveness, given how subjective stories (and indeed anything created is), some stories will hit more for some readers than others--with some stories suffering from predictable or unsatisfactory conclusions. For me, the parental terror and unexpected shifts in K.M. Bennett's "Mrs. Merriweather's Lactation Services," the eco-horror of C.S. Magnuson's "This House Has Good Roots," The shuddering suspense of Angela Yuriko Smith's "Fake Muse," and Donna J.W. Munro's epic "His Edges" were the standouts for me. Sumiko Saulson's poem "A Rise in Red" is a rallying cry for the entire collection. Overall, standout work from a number of voices in horror writing that address various ills in our society at large. Recommended.

Final note, I don't know that I found the piece "First Person, Shooter" by J. Rocky Colavito to be a necessary addition to the collection both for the base content (schizophrenic school shooter) and it's apparent lack of anything to say other than "Hey, this is bad." Maybe I missed something in the mix, but that one story drug the collection down quite a bit for me. I think a lot of creative writing instructors have fatigue from this sort of story for a number of reasons, perhaps the greatest among them being the difficulty of making something truly new. The active shooter story in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's short story collection Friday Black is the only one that comes to mind. I get the feeling Colavito was reaching for a Thomas Ligotti mode in this work, but it just didn't hit the mark in my mind.

Nightmerica had such a strong vision. There were moments in here that seriously hit. Some of the poems were raw in the best way, and certain lines really lingered with me. The themes? Heavy and important. You can feel the passion, the anger, the grief, and the need to be heard pulsing through these pages.

That said, some pieces didn’t fully land for me. A few stories felt a little disjointed or like they needed more polish to reach their full potential.

Still, I admire what this collection was trying to do. It is unafraid to speak, to scream, to question. And for readers who crave horror with teeth and heart, it might just be exactly what they are looking for.

I don't think I knew this was an anthology of short stories when I picked it up, but as I worked my way through them I was impressed with the creepy, eerie vibe. Each author takes the idea of Life, Liberty, or The Pursuit of Happiness as it relates to the dying American Dream and turns those ideas into stories filled with demons, man eating plants, sacrifice, and more.

I picked this book up because I wanted horror and it certainly was horrifying, There are stories related to discrimination, medical, political, job insecurity, tech, and so much more. I think it was horrifying (for me) because even though the stories are presented in a fictional way, they are not too far from the truth of many situations people currently face. I would actually go so far as to say the demons and plants eating men probably make the stories less horrifying because we are then able to spin them with sci-fi, and fiction elements.

Natural Selection comes near the beginning and does hit pretty close to the vest with regards to queer rights and mountain men horror stories. Just remember not everything is as it seems and the ending is... well deserved.

Company Policy also highlights some of the issues with health insurance companies and their denial to pay as well as others who blindly seem to follow the policies. It ultimately turns into a ghost story which is a great story.

This book does not pull it's punches and can be a bit triggering but I think it's well worth the read. Some of the depictions of "life" will trigger visceral reactions so just be aware.

Very interesting. I did enjoy reading this anthology.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this approved eARC.

Thanks NetGally for the eARC!

This book consists of short stories and poems by different authors that brings a range of horror themes and many injustices in America. The American Dream is just an illusion that everyone’s trying to achieve. This book isn’t for narrow minded people- I suggest reading with an open mind. Maybe you know someone who could benefit from reading this book.

"Nightmerica" is essentially a protest against the wiles of the so-called "American Dream," an illusion, in its current form at least, that has affected and is affecting a large part of today's ideological makeup in the States. According to editor Amanda Worthington's preface, the American Dream was "force-fed" to people "at an early age," as the idea that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were my birthright as an American if I did as I was told." Disastrously, the dream not only has been corrupted, the promise of equal rights and access to quality healthcare, for instance, never fulfilled - it is also corrupting "our minds, hearts, and bodies." No wonder, then, the authors contributing to the anthology are justifiably angry, bitter, even occasionally resigned to the collapse of this precious vision, coming up with stories and poems brimming with grief, rage, or a loss of heart, expressed straightforwardly as plain opposition and strong disapproval.

"Nightmerica," however, is not a political anthology - at least it's not meant to put forward arguments or debate any actual situation in detail. It's a horror anthology, with some very good stories (out of the 11 tales, I liked more than half) and several interesting poems (seven poems and one in prose - which poems, however, I won't comment upon, since I dislike poetry in general).

The stories cover many kinds of horror (medical, political, queer, family, job, tech, sci-fi), but there's a special emphasis on futuristic and speculative science fiction; the longer stories rest on science fictional premises, mostly about how politically manipulated and/or subdued Americans survive in a dystopian future. The stories are very clever and often challenging. Admittedly, though, the quality is very uneven, some stories taking too long to make a point, others slowed down by indecision about which element (horror or politics) they want to highlight. I'll mention my favorites.

The opening story, C. S. Magnuson's "This Place Has Good Roots," was by far the story I enjoyed most: an old woman has lost her home and is put to the curb; the company now owning it has sent two guys to witness the eviction; the old lady warns them that she can't leave, her children "have roots here." The story's about discovering what this means. Excellent eco-horror.

Dan B. Fierce's "Natural Selection," a Cabin 187 tale, though a little too much on the nose about queer rights, combines hillbilly horror with a serial killer theme in the context of gay marriage, and offers an entertaining tale about never judging a book by its cover.

"Exceptional Wretches" by Joe Koch, about a pregnant trans man seeking to get rid of "the thing inside" him (to put it bluntly), is a very weird tale, told in a most mind-bending way, with a very sad ending.

"Company Policy" by Larry Hinkle and Valerie B. William is an excellent ghost story about a medical insurance company manager, whose decision to keep blindly following company policy (written, of course, by himself) and denying coverage to terminally ill clients, leads him to his own personal hell. The ending is AMAZING. I never expected he'd do that.

Finally, Austin Gragg's "Feeding America" was a creepy futiristic tale of job horror, with the most unsettling ending in the volume.

I recommend the anthology for its visceral imagery and its "no quarter" approach to the political darkness it's undertaken to explore.

As an avid horror reader who leans very (very, very) far left in my politics, I thought I was going to love this anthology. And I did enjoy several stories (This Place Has Good Roots, His Edges, and Feeding America were probably my favorites).

However, I walked away feeling like I had simply been reminded of the horror in our society. The stories didn't transform my understanding of issues or help me make sense of the grief of this era of America. In many cases, it simply retold the trauma in a flat, unimpactful manner. As a queer American woman, I genuinely can't tell exactly who this anthology was written for.

The poetry did feel stronger than the prose (in my opinion), but I'm not an avid poetry reader, so I won't extrapolate on that because its a bit out of my review depth.

While I think this may be a good fit for some horror lovers, it just wasn't for me.

Thank you to Amanda Worthington and Dragon's Roost Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This collection is wildly inconsistent. Each story is supposed to tackle one of three thematic areas, but these connections range between tenuous at best and so strict that it overpowers the story. The poetry in this collection is pretty solid, but the prose stories left something to be desired. This collection felt like it suffered from an extreme lack of editorial oversight. There are simple mistakes and weird inconsistencies throughout the collection. I really wanted to love these stories, but I found myself completely underwhelmed.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this ARC. Unfortunately, this was a hard DNF for me. After the second story, I knew this book was not for me. I appreciated the themes of oppression that they tried to explore in each short story, but the execution fell short for me. Rolling the heavy techniques of oppression into a horror plot was just not it for me. As a female POC, these stories did nothing but irritate me.